Yes, a strong sense of belonging and community - and its counterpart, avoiding excommunication - are very powerful. Religions throughout the ages demonstrate that. I think there’s one more thing, though.
People who are willing to abandon reason in order to believe that they’re “winning” are the problem. That willingness is exploited by manufacturing a losing condition for them, while at the same time supplying the “winning solution”: join us.
There you have it, the bits that, when combined, create the paradox of “We’re being oppressed at every turn! We’re undeniably correct and unstoppably strong!” “You’re losing, come with us so we can all win really soon.”
2 quotes come to mind
The problem:
“you cant reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into.”
- Jonathan Swift
And the solution:
”He drew a circle that shut me out- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle and took him In!”
- Edwin Markham
You have to draw a bigger circle. It is the way to deprogram people from that tribalistic mentality. Teaching them and “winning” debates will not work.
You can have the hateful murderous delusional assholes in your circle. I want my family to live.
Yeah, i mean that sounds great until 40% of the country gets so fanatical and dehumanizing that they decide the only choice is to fight a war.
I prefer finding common ground, deprograming, and forgiveness over violence unless that is the only path that remains.
Of course not. You never could. It’s why you can’t convince someone to stop being a Christian fundie by explaining how evolution is unequivocally true. Even if you can overcome the sunk cost fallacy, you’ll never overcome the backfire effect.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
She was struck by how people who were usually rational in private would repeat the utterly absurd slogans of the regime, such as claiming that the dictator Hafez al-Assad was the greatest chemist in the world.
This claim is so groundless that Fox, the network that supported the allegation, had to pay nearly a billion dollars in a settlement with Dominion, the company that makes the machines.
Along with Wedeen’s Syrian example, I’m reminded of the Czech dissident and playwright Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, where he tells the story of a greengrocer in communist-era Prague who puts up pro-regime posters in his shop window.
Republican politicians face none of the danger communist-era Czechoslovaks or Syrians under the Assads have, but living in truth seems beyond them.Contradicting Trump’s absurdities risks falling out of favour with the leader and his supporters.
A democracy will struggle to survive, let alone flourish, when such huge swathes of its population see it as their badge of loyalty not to trust its most fundamental processes.
Pledging loyalty to the “big lie” is more about identity than knowledge – and to fight it entails understanding the need for belonging and meaning it fulfils.
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